


Ransom

by rellkelltn87



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Bagels, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Kidnapping, some canon divergence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:06:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23255902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rellkelltn87/pseuds/rellkelltn87
Summary: Carisi has been kidnapped, but a ransom demand has yet to be made.Since Gary Munson was recently murdered in prison, Barba wonders if the COs who once threatened his life know about the undisclosed relationship he had with Carisi in the 6 months before he left the DA's office.Or is it something else entirely?
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 74





	1. Chapter 1

“Thirty-six hours.” Benson looked over at Rollins, who was seated at her desk, her eyes fixed on nothing in particular. “No word from Eames and the feds.” She swallowed hard enough to draw Rollins’s attention back to her. “We’re at thirty-six hours.”

“No ransom call.” Rollins smacked an open hand against one of her desk drawers. “No call, no note, no email. I’m going to pretend I don’t know what that means.”

ADA Sonny Carisi had been missing for thirty-six hours. The last person to hear from him had been his sister Teresa, at 10 on Wednesday evening. Vanessa Hadid was concerned when he didn’t show up for work the next morning. At noon, Teresa went to check on him and found no one in his apartment. His briefcase was gone, but there was no sign of a burglary or even a struggle. 

An hour later, NYPD detectives found traces of blood in Carisi’s lobby. A few building residents had called to complain that the lobby security cameras had been turned off. No one heard any commotion, possibly because Carisi usually left for work at 5:30AM, earlier than most of the other residents. 

In a trash bin outside the building, the detectives found Carisi’s cell phone, with _911_ on the keypad screen, undialed. There were more traces of blood on the street. NYPD — and later the PD/FBI joint task force, brought in because Carisi had worked some high-profile cases during the last year — hypothesized that the attacker or attackers had blindsided Carisi while he left the building, possibly striking him in the head. He must have tossed the phone in the garbage as a last-ditch message. 

And then, more than two hours into the investigation, there was a glimmer of hope: a woman on the other side of the street had seen two men load a third into a BMW. She left for work at 5:30 in the morning, just like Carisi, and had initially assumed that the third man, slumped with one arm across each of the other men’s shoulders, was still drunk from the night before, a not-unfamiliar sight on a New York City street before six o’clock. This assured Captain Eames of the joint task force that they’d intended to take Carisi alive.

A full day later, Carisi’s captors had yet to make contact. 

“Tell me,” Benson had said to Eames, “please tell me you’re lying in order to keep the number of people who know about the ransom demand to a minimum.”

“I wish I was. But you’re commanding officer on the two highest-profile cases Carisi was prosecuting. If we get a ransom demand, you’ll know.”

Now, with Tamin and most of the officers out in the field, the squadroom was nearly empty. Benson was surprised to see Rafael Barba standing in the doorway.

She wasn’t so much surprised to _see_ Barba, actually, because Barba had been back in New York for a few weeks in anticipation of the April primaries, but rather was surprised by his appearance. His hair was hastily combed, his Iowa beard ungroomed, the whites of his eyes tinted red. “Rafa,” she said, walking over to him with her arms out. 

He didn’t accept the embrace, instead brusquely shaking his head. 

“When did you —” Benson started to say.

“This morning. His sister Bella called. Liv, I — can we talk in your office?”

“Of course.” Benson laid an open hand on his back and led him across the squadroom, shutting the door behind her when they reached her office. As she sat with Barba on the small couch beneath the window that looked out on the squadroom, her face suddenly fell. “Rafa,” she said, a firmness overtaking her gentle demeanor, “ _when_?”

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

“While you were —”

“You don’t want me to answer that,” he repeated. 

“Okay,” she said, taking a breath, “but you realize this means the COs who threatened your life four years ago are now also suspects.”

“That’s why I came to you.”

“Gary Munson was murdered at Ossining last month. You didn’t think to come to me right away?”

“Liv,” he said, waving his hands in front of him, “Liv, Liv, Liv, Liv, Liv.” He was frantic. “I only found out this morning.”

“And you took _hours_ to come to me because —”

“Because Carisi’s working two very high profile cases involving two men with a lot of connections, and if I came forward about our six-month-long now-defunct relationship, then every case I worked with him as investigating detective, especially the ones where I called him to the stand, would have grounds for appeal. They’ll even be able to overturn plea deals.”

Benson walked over to her desk in a few quick strides and picked up her phone. “I can’t believe you waited this long. I thought you were past your selfish phase.”

“You and I both know —”

She cut him off with a loud _shush_ and proceeded to call Captain Eames, sharing with her the full nature — except for the timeline — of the situation. Benson then dropped the phone back into its cradle and sat behind her desk. “Eames is coming to talk to you. Told me to have you wait right here. So what do you and I both know?”

“Sir Tobias Moore, or Granya Marcil, or someone else associated with Getz, are much more likely suspects.”

“I’d agree with you if Munson hadn’t been murdered in prison last month and if I hadn’t been a detective for almost half my life.”

“The death threats stopped years ago. At least a year before Carisi and I were together.”

“Why didn’t you just disclose?” she asked, leaning back in her chair and covering her eyes with one hand. “There are _procedures_.”

“Why didn’t you and Tucker disclose in the middle of a conflict of interest?”

She removed her hand from her eyes and stared at him, almost blankly.

“Sorry,” he said in a hoarse whisper, and sat silently in remorse until Eames arrived to interview him.

In an interview room (he’d half-expected Benson to throw them into interrogation), Barba told Eames the whole story: how Rollins and Carisi had investigated the death threats against him, how Heredio was working for the men who’d stood by their colleague Munson through hell or high water, regardless of his crimes, how he and Carisi had maintained a friendly competitive flirtation that neither man acknowledged until one afternoon in August 2017, how he’d left six months later without saying goodbye because he knew Carisi couldn’t handle the failure in judgment — the failure in character, the failure in everything — that had led to his departure from the DA’s office. 

They’d spoken once since then. _I can’t forgive you_ , Carisi had said. _You gotta understand why I can’t forgive you._ And of course, Barba did. 

He told Eames they tried to convince themselves their relationship was casual, not headed anywhere, and didn’t disclose out of fear of appeals, especially out of fear that Munson’s lawyers would appeal. “But you weren’t together then,” Eames pointed out.

“We’d kept our actual relationship a secret for six months. Munson’s filthy lawyers would have argued that there was no reason to believe we hadn’t been together for years before that too. No way to prove otherwise.” 

Barba left out the other reason they hadn’t disclosed, something Carisi had told him in confidence one night after he asked Barba if he could safely tell Bella about their relationship. Carisi had come out to his family and friends as a bisexual man, one family member or friend at a time, over a Thanksgiving weekend the year before he turned 30. He was met with varying degrees of _hm_ s and _no you aren’t_ s and _come on_ s and lots of secondhand embarrassment. The secondhand embarrassment that was so clear in the eyes of his family and most of his friends — everyone except Bella, for whatever reason, _thank god for Bella_ , he’d said a few times as he’d told Barba the story — was what led him to slowly fold himself back into the closet. Those were his words, _slowly fold myself_ , making a joke out of his own long legs, but Barba knew Carisi hadn’t gotten over the weekend when everyone laughed off his declaration, decided it was just Sonny “going through something” before he started law school to ease his weirdly restless soul. 

So he told Eames almost everything, every detail that helped, every detail that mattered, leaving out the ones that didn’t. 

When Benson came to retrieve him from the interview room, her face had softened a bit. 

“We’ll call you if we need anything else,” Eames told him.

Barba nodded. “Please.”

He and Benson walked back to her office together. “I’m sorry for what I said before about you and Tucker.”

She opened the door and they resumed their positions on the couch. “It’s not untrue,” she admitted.

“But given the circumstances, entirely uncalled for.”

“Yes.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Bella said the detectives believed Sonny was taken alive, intentionally. But there’s been no request for ransom, no contact?”

“No.” She touched Barba’s shoulder. “Not yet.”

“That’s not a good sign, is it?”

Benson breathed deep. “Usually,” she said, “it’s not. But —”

“I love him.”

“I know.” She kept her hand on his shoulder as he tried to fight off the tears welling up behind his eyes. “And this is different. Carisi’s strong. He’s clever. He’s —”

She stopped when Barba’s eyes blinked closed, tears running down his cheeks. “He’s going to want you to shave that beard,” she said with mock seriousness, tilting her head to look at Barba, as if she hoped to bring a smile to his face. “It’s okay. You didn’t know until this morning. You had to make a decision that could have affected a lot of people, a lot of cases.”

“I left him two years ago with no explanation,” Barba said. “You don’t think it could be the COs, do you?”

“It’s an avenue Eames is going to have to investigate.”

“I haven’t heard a peep out of them in years. And Toby Moore —”

“Let Eames do what she has to do. Please.”

“And anyone who’s observed either of us over the last two years would know that we’re not together anymore.”

Benson placed both her hands on Barba’s forearms. “Rafa,” she said, steadying him, “it’s going to be okay.”


	2. Chapter 2

Barba and Carisi’s getting together might have been called a meet-cute if they hadn’t already known each other for three years, and if their first kiss on a weekday afternoon in Barba’s apartment hadn’t been proceeded by Carisi punching a guy in the face to subdue him. 

Barba was in Brooklyn working on — or, arguing over jurisdiction about — a case with the Kings County DA. He’d brought Carisi with him because the detective had bee investigating the case for months, and was the person on SVU most intimately familiar with it. After two hours of analysis and argument, most of which was actually bickering about whether SVU had no concept whatsoever of jurisdiction, the ADA and the detective stopped for bagels at a local place that Barba knew well. 

Since it was a humid August weekday before noon, the line was only halfway out the door, not down the block like on weekends.

Carisi shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit pants and bounced on his heels as they waited. “At least now I’ve got no chance of getting hired by that office,” he said, keeping his voice low and clenching his teeth.

Barba turned his head slightly. “You never pursued the job openings I sent your way last year. Why?”

Carisi shrugged. “Too busy with work. Too many cases I had to see through.”

“You finished law school and passed the Bar while working as a detective.”

“What am I, a hostile witness?”

Barba shook his head and stepped forward with the line. 

“It’s better I stay with the squad a while longer,” Carisi said. “After what happened to Dodds, we’re understaffed, and we’re hurting, you know.”

Turning around, Barba flashed Carisi a sympathetic glance. “I know,” he said assuringly. 

“And it’s been more than a year, I get a lot of grief for that, there’s a professor from Fordham who says I’ve got to move on already, but that shoulda been me on that call. After what I saw on Staten Island, all the DV unlawful imprisonment we used to get, I woulda — I don’t know, except it should have been me.”

A shout of “HOW THE FUCK DID YOU GET MY ORDER WRONG AGAIN?” at the front of the line turned both men’s attention to the counter. 

“I’m sorry,” the woman assembling the customer’s order said. “I’ll —”

“Onion bagel,” the man said loudly, his polo shirt and hair becoming progressively more drenched with sweat as his face wrinkled in fury. “Tuna. Mayonnaise. Salt. Pepper. Ham. Cheddar. Cream cheese. Capers. Lettuce. Tomato. Ketchup. How hard is it to get that right?”

“Excuse me,” a woman in line said, “that’s not what he ordered. I heard him say _jalapeño-cheddar bagel, chicken salad, mustard, ketchup, and swiss_. “

“You think you know me?” the outraged sandy-haired polo shirt at the front of the line barked. “You don’t know me!” 

“Yeah, you come in here every other week and whenever you have a woman taking your order at the counter, you tell her one thing and then scream at her that she got your order wrong even though she didn’t.”

“You’re a liar, like all the women on Match and Tinder and —”

“He’s full of shit,” another woman said, stepping out of the line to speak to the crowd. “Does this every couple of weeks. There are YouTube videos.”

“YouTube videos he took himself!” another customer chimed in.

“Fuck you! All of you! Can’t get a fucking date ‘cause all of you keep mocking me, when all I’m trying to do is get some justice for guys like me who —”

“I know him,” Carisi said to Barba. “Was in first-year classes with him at Fordham. Peter Stone. Kept failing all the exams because he refused to study. We tried to reach out, invite him to our study groups, but he was always whining nonsense about how he’d have passed if not for feminism making all the women students think they’re victims. Made no sense. This guy’s a walking word salad. Failed out before the end of 1L.”

Stone was getting in some of the women’s faces, so Carisi reflexively patted Barba’s chest and moved off the line. “NYPD,” he announced. “Sir, I’m gonna ask you to back away and leave the premises before —”

“Before you have to arrest me? On what charges? And you work for the sex cops, _Sonny_ , what do you know about me or anything that’s going on here, you oversensitive wobbly giraffe? Is that what women go for nowadays, oversensitive wobbly giraffes who think _feelings_ are facts? You’re going to arrest me for hurting everybody’s feelings?”

“Shut the fuck up,” one of the women in line said, and Stone immediately lunged at her, fist in the air. Carisi grabbed him by the back of his shirt.

“She’s right,” Carisi said.

Stone broke free of Carisi’s grip and punched the detective in the face, hitting him squarely on the nose. 

Carisi reacted by punching Stone to subdue him, then tackling him to the ground. He took out his phone and called for backup, waving Barba away when the ADA hurried toward him. 

By the time two officers arrived to take Stone to the local precinct and Carisi was examined by a paramedic, told to go to the ER if he woke up with two black eyes, the detective seemed numb, almost shell-shocked by the encounter. 

He still had blood on his face from the initial nosebleed. No wonder.

“Hey,” Barba said, gently touching Carisi’s back, “I called out for the rest of the day. Why don’t you come to my place and get cleaned up?”

Carisi flinched, then nodded.

Barba knew what he was risking. He knew the detective-who-should-be-an-ADA had harbored a crush on him — the nature of which he couldn’t be sure, since Carisi kept his love life cards face down on the table even as he seemed so wide-eyed and open about everything else — for years. 

Lately, maybe even for the last twelve or fourteen or eighteen months, the crush had been reciprocal. 

But Carisi was in this late thirties, Barba in his late forties, so crushes with massive conflicts of interest behind them were not worth pursuing. Massive conflicts of interest were massively unwise.

Carisi emerged from Barba’s shower in his undershirt and dress pants, carrying the rest of his suit and his socks over one arm. 

“How are you doing?” Barba asked.

“Better, thanks.”

Barba patted the space next to him on the couch, a calculated risk. Carisi took a second calculated risk, throwing his shirt, vest, and jacket down on an armchair and sitting only an inch from Barba.

Barba reached out and rubbed Carisi’s back with an open hand. Carisi raised one eyebrow.

Just when Barba was about to apologize for the inappropriate gesture, Carisi leaned over and kissed him. Barba cupped Carisi’s cheek in one hand and smirked against Carisi’s lips.

“Bad idea,” he warned, still smirking. “Bad, bad idea.”

“Yeah.”

Barba kissed the detective’s lips a few more times before Carisi said, “life’s short. I want to feel good, even if it’s just for the rest of the afternoon.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t know what?”

“Whether you were into men, whether —”

“I’m into _you_ ,” Carisi said, one hand on Barba’s inner thigh, the other moving to unbutton Barba’s vest. 

“Whether,” Barba continued, steadying Carisi’s hand and holding it tight, “when you had blood on your face today, you —”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Carisi insisted, nevertheless tilting his head to look at Barba. “You’re one of the only people who remembers, though. One of the only people who doesn’t think I should be over having a gun held to my head by now already.”

“You want to talk about it?” Barba prompted.

“No,” Carisi whispered, “I told you, no. But thank you for asking. You’re the only one who asked.”

“Shh.” Barba kissed Carisi’s lips one more time, then kissed his neck. “You let me take care of you today, Sonny.” Another kiss pressed to his neck, just below his jawline, eliciting a grunt from Carisi. “You let Rafi take care of you.” Barba lifted his head to look directly into the wide blue eyes in front of him. “You feeling all right for —”

“Believe me,” Carisi said, almost sputtering out the words, “there is no longer any blood in my nose, or anywhere in my face.”

Barba smiled wickedly, cupping Carisi through his trousers. “Take these off,” he said, “and I’ll show you how impressed I am by you.”

After Barba had demonstrated his attraction and pride with his mouth and tongue, and Carisi was pressed back into the couch, exhausted, Barba rose back up to join him. Carisi caught his breath and eagerly leaned forward to press his palm to Barba’s crotch. 

“Hey,” Barba said, “you get these suit pants dirty and I’ll sue you for all you’re worth.”

“Guess I’ll just have to get you naked, then.” 

“C’mon.” Barba led Carisi to the bedroom, where they’d spend the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening.

—

At first, they agreed to leave their dalliance to one encounter, because disclosure would be too challenging, hovering between a commitment neither man was quite ready to make following past losses and disappointments, and the fact of the matter that Carisi investigated most of the cases that Barba prosecuted. But only weeks later, they fell into bed again.

Whatever Carisi lacked in experience, he made up for in eagerness. They got together again, and then again, and again, quietly agreeing that they simply wouldn’t disclose. One day after the new year, Carisi told Barba he’d applied for a position with the Manhattan DA’s office, which meant that they’d be working together as ADAs, on different cases. Unlike with the detective-ADA relationship, an ADA-ADA relationship meant no conflicts of interest as long as they didn’t work the same cases. 

What they _had_ disclosed, to each other, in the privacy of Barba’s apartment over six months, was beyond any conflict: they slowly learned about the cracks in each other’s hearts that affected their work, that simultaneously stood in the way of and guided the justice they pursued. 

So when Barba went on trial for murder that February, he thought Carisi might understand, even a little bit, the reasons for his horrific error in judgment. 

“I looked up to you,” Carisi said. “I trusted you. I mighta loved you, but, what’s that matter now.”

Barba disappeared to Miami for six weeks after the verdict. On his return to New York, he appeared before the Bar, was formally censured but luckily not disbarred, and then took a job with a political law firm that would keep him out of state for several weeks at a time . Eventually, he called both Benson and Carisi. Benson eventually, after many months, came around and forgave him, tentatively and conditionally, but enough for them to start repairing their friendship. Carisi didn’t. 

He called back only once. “You’re really something else nosing around for forgiveness,” he told Barba. “Don’t call me again.”

Barba threw himself into his work over the next year. He heard nothing from Carisi except when Benson called to tell him that Carisi was their new ADA — how he’d wanted to celebrate with the man he’d so deeply let down! — and the morning Carisi’s sister Bella called, frantic, to tell him that her brother had most likely been kidnapped. Bella told him that he’d better get his ass to the 16th precinct to disclose everything about their secret-to-everyone-except-Bella-(and maybe Rita Calhoun who’d made a remarkably accurate guess over bourbon one night) six month long relationship. 

Today, two full days since Carisi had gone missing, Barba sat in his office, unable to concentrate. 

His phone rang. Olivia Benson’s name flashed on the screen. Good news, or bad news, no middle ground for sure.

“The kidnappers contacted SVU by email,” Benson told him. “Eames is going to want to talk to you again, said I could give you a heads up. We all got a copy in our inbox. I’ve asked for a detail on you as soon as NYPD can set it up. For now, stay where you are.”

Barba shuddered, memories of the seemingly resolved death threats against him flooding back. 

“The message says they’re not following up with ransom demands just yet.”

“Does that mean he’s —”

“Can’t say for sure, but we’re all hoping for the best. The fact that they reached out to us is good news, look at it that way for now. They wrote that since you got someone one of the kidnappers cared about killed —”

“Munson.” 

“Yes. They claim to be a group of close friends of his. The feds are questioning everyone who knew him. Whoever took Carisi says that it’s your fault Munson was killed in prison, so they’re deciding on whether to demand a ransom, or to kill Carisi as revenge on you.” 

“My God,” Barba said, burying his face in his hands, “let them take me. Let them get their revenge by taking me.”

“You know that’s not helpful.”

“Sonny and I haven’t been together in more than two years. We haven’t spoken in more than two years. You have to find him, Liv, you have to get him out of there, wherever he is.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 of I-don't-know-how-many. 
> 
> Minor content warnings for bridge-and-tunnel biphobia and forehead licking I suppose.

Bella Carisi would have smacked Barba clear across the face if she hadn’t immediately thought better of it, Barba was sure. In fact, when she balled her raised hand up into a fist, he wondered if she was preparing to punch him in the head in the split second before she restrained herself.

“I called you first thing in the morning,” she said, “as soon as they told me. Teresa waited, didn’t want to scare me or Ma, but she didn’t know about you and Sonny. I called you the second I found out, when there was no time to waste, and —” She cut herself off, finally lowering her hand. “The detective said his boss didn’t hear from you until noon.”

Bella had met Barba in his uptown office. He was surprised that the police detail outside had let her in, but imagined she’d made a strong persuasive argument in true Carisi-family fashion. 

“They’re telling me —” she started to say, but her voice broke. 

“I know,” Barba said as gently as he could.

“Still no ransom demand. The guys who were after you sent emails out to SVU, and they said they were _deciding_.”

“I know,” Barba said again.

“What the fuck does _deciding_ mean? They’re telling me —”

She was still unable to finish without choking up. She had some idea what “deciding” meant, and so did Barba.

Barba tried to smile comfortingly at her, but he understood too well what she was trying to say. Three days. One email from the kidnappers: they were “deciding” whether to demand a ransom or kill Carisi as revenge on Barba. And now, after a long night, no demands, no progress on locating Carisi, no word from Benson or Eames.

Bella fell into his arms, pressing her nose to his chest, sobbing silently. 

Bella was the only person other than himself and Carisi who’d known about the two of them during their 6-month-long relationship, an awfully long time to be together without anyone else knowing. 

“You broke his heart, you asshole,” she said, her tears staining Barba’s shirt. 

“That’s why I left.”

“You broke his heart _when_ you left. I told Sonny to bring you for dinner one day, promised him I’d run interference against all the stupid questions and play-by-play before, during, and after.”

“As much as Sonny liked to keep quiet about his love life,” Barba said softly, his voice almost a whisper, “the real problem was that we were together when he was investigating cases that I prosecuted.”

Bella let out a puff of air and pulled away, holding her arms out at her sides, exasperated.

“I don’t know what to say,” Barba told her.

“However much of the New York court system you two fucked up, you shouldn’t have waited _four hours_ yesterday.”

“No.” Barba looked at his feet. “No, I shouldn’t have.”

Bella wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Were you getting threats again?”

“No, I swear, I haven’t received a single threat since Rollins and your brother caught the man who was hired to threaten me. That was well before Sonny and I got together.”

“In any case, what happened to Sonny was about you. They went after him because of you.”

“Bella,” Barba said, his own voice breaking into pieces now, “you think I don’t —”

“Just wanted to make sure you understand that whatever happens to Sonny is all on you. Ma and Pop and my sisters and my brother-in-law are all gonna know that whoever took Sonny was looking to get to _you_ , and whatever they do with that information is up to them.”

She left without entertaining the half-plea that crackled from Barba’s throat, slamming his office door behind her.

—

At first, before he got his bearings, Carisi thought he’d been thrown into the trunk of his captors’ car.

But he wasn’t cold and was, in fact, so warm that he’d wriggled out of his tan overcoat, suit jacket, vest, tie, and eventually dress shirt in the first few hours he’d spent in the dark, narrow place.

He was warm, he told himself, so it was unlikely he was in a trunk outdoors or in a garage when spring hadn’t yet arrived.

For an hour or so, he panicked at the thought that they’d buried him alive.

But air was still flowing from somewhere. Hours and hours had gone by and although his heart raced from the darkness and narrowness of captivity, he could feel air on his face. 

After a while he registered voices outside, too muffled to hear, but definitely arguing.

He tried to pay attention, terrified as he was, so he’d be a good witness if he survived this ordeal.

When a man’s hand shoved a hastily-made sandwich and water bottle in his face, he wondered if he was maybe inside a piece of furniture.

His legs were tied together, and there was no way for him to turn so that he could raise his arms above his body. 

He was hungry and thirsty all the time, whatever “time” meant inside this box, or sofa — yes, sofa made a lot of sense — even when a hand from above shoved a bite to eat and some water in his direction. 

Sometimes he relieved himself in the discarded water bottles, but he couldn’t keep track of time by that either, because he was dehydrated. 

A sofa made either a lot of sense or very little sense.

Once when the lid or cushion or whatever was above his head was lifted slightly so the hand could shove in a candy bar, he heard the name _Munson_.

Goddamnit, he thought to himself. 

And after that, he worried: Rafael’s going to think this is his fault. Rafael’s going to blame himself.

—

“If Barba had received new death threats, would have told, or warned, Carisi?”

Benson leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. “You’re too hard on him,” she told Eames, who stood against the wall with her arms folded.

“I’m working a ticking-clock kidnapping case with minimal contact from the kidnappers, and Barba waited four hours to come forward.” Eames moved closer, pressing the palm of her hand to Benson’s desk. “If you had a kidnapping case where a man didn’t disclose that he was the kidnapped baby’s father until 36 hours in, and then you found out he’d been receiving death threats, you’d do exactly what I’m doing now. You’d ask the same questions.”

“Point taken,” Benson said resignedly. 

“So —?”

“He told _us_ he hadn’t heard from the Munson supporters in years. He wouldn’t lie about that, Alex. I know him well enough.”

“How many times have we heard friends and family say that?”

“He didn’t come forward with the original death threats because they only affected him, and he didn’t want NYPD or the DA’s office to waste their time on him when Munson needed to be convicted and put away.”

“What about what he did two years ago?”

Benson pursed her lips. “That was … out of character.”

“You have to look at this from my point of view.”

“So from your point of view, Rafael is selfish. Selfish enough to withhold information to protect his own ass, his status with the Bar.”

“I have to consider the possibility that there were more death threats he’s not showing us, and those threats could be key to locating Carisi.”

“Do what you have to.”

“He might have felt guilty and —”

“If Rafael _felt guilty_ ,” Benson interrupted, “he’d have turned over everything. More than everything.”

Eames nodded. “Okay.”

“Anything else you can tell me about where the investigation stands?”

“The good news,” Eames said, sighing, “is that Munson’s buddies are completely incompetent. The bad news —”

“Is that they’re completely incompetent?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

—

On a Saturday morning about a week before Christmas, Carisi was in Barba’s kitchen assembling omelets and cooking bacon (in spite of serial killer doctors who had warned him against the fatty, nitrite-laden strips of pork) as he had been the last few Saturdays, making himself more comfortable than an ethically-problematic relationship between an ADA and the detective who investigated the cases he prosecuted warranted. 

Carisi promised himself that he’d find a job as an ADA soon, leave SVU, and then he and Barba would disclose, a white-lie disclosure that omitted the last four and a half months. 

He’d tell his family, he’d bring Barba home for dinner, they’d stop laughing at how he was clearly “going through something” and maybe even avoid criticizing him for having girlfriends when “he was just going to wind up with a man anyway,” an accusation Gina had made a few years ago when he’d mentioned a man he was interested in. He’d learned to keep his mouth shut around Gina, Teresa, and his parents, but with Barba, if and only if that conflict of interest disappeared, he wanted to tell everyone and say _fuck it_ to all their inappropriate observations.

So many voices, so much he’d internalized. He listened to the bacon instead.

Barba sauntered in wearing pajama pants and nothing else, his hair half-standing up, his eyes narrow from sleep, a beautifully crooked smile on his face. 

Carisi was falling in love with his ethically problematic conflict of interest. 

He didn’t want to think of disbarment, only of Barba’s smile. 

“Hey, hey Raf,” Carisi said, turning off the stove and reaching for his phone on the counter.

“What stupid video do you have for me now?” 

Carisi grinned in response to Barba’s smirk. He pressed play and held the screen to Barba’s face.

“A penguin and a giraffe,” Barba said matter-of-factly. 

“Who are friends despite all their differences.”

“The giraffe just licked the penguin,” Barba observed. “I think they’re more than friends.”

Carisi stuck out his tongue, then leaned down and licked Barba’s forehead. 

Barba, laughing, wrapped his arms around Carisi’s waist.

There was something wonderful in that space, but neither of them would say how wonderful it was because of the conflict of interest they’d let snowball, foolishly.

—

Carisi’s eyes shot open.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been inside what he was now certain was an old hollowed-out sofabed. He’d also figured out that what was beneath him was likely a carpet. A sofa frame was on top of him, and with the wingtips he refused to remove in case he got the opportunity to kick, he could feel a bump, plausibly the inside of a recliner mechanism. 

When he could, he paid attention to what was happening outside the sofa. There were three people, he guessed, two men and a woman. He only ever heard muffled voices and couldn’t make out what they were saying, save for the one time he’d heard “Munson.” They came and went; he could hear the front door slamming. 

A few minutes, or hours, later — who the hell knew — he heard a combination of door slams and voices that suggested to him that he’d been left alone.

He had to take a calculated risk. If he wasn’t alone, whoever was in the house or apartment or room likely had a gun and was prepared to avenge Munson’s murder however they could. 

But how did they know about him and Rafael? The two of them had been exceedingly careful, and there’d been no reason to believe that anyone other than Bella knew. 

How could someone invested in protecting Gary Munson’s reputation know that Barba and Carisi had been in a six-month-long relationship more than two years ago? 

In any case, if Carisi stayed where he was, he’d almost certainly be killed. If he tried to escape, he’d either be killed or make it outside to tell his story. Fifty-fifty. Or maybe ninety-ten. Either way, a calculated, necessary risk. 

So, with all the strength he could summon, he kicked the knob beneath his shoe. When he kicked it a second time, it rattled loose, and when he heard no shouts or footsteps or gunfire, Carisi grew more confident that they’d fortunately and incompetently left him alone. 

One more kick and the knob fell out completely. He saw light, finally, for the first time in what must have been days. Fully straightening his long legs, he smashed out the panel with both feet. When it fell, he slithered out like a snake in reverse, finding himself in an empty apartment. 

He used the arm of the couch to pull himself up, using all the weight in his torso to compensate for his tied-together legs. In the kitchen, he found a knife and cut himself free of the zip ties.

When he burst out the door into the hallway, he was startled: this was his own building, two floors below his apartment.


	4. Chapter 4

His legs trembled, every muscle burning as he struggled to climb the two flights of stairs to his apartment, or what he hoped was his apartment. Without making a sound, he choked out a wordless prayer that this was not a hallucination from inside that goddamn sofa. He climbed, one shaky foot in front of the other, confident in only one thing, that he’d been right to refuse the elevator. If they came back for him — what if they came back for him? — he’d be cornered, unable to run. 

He was too exhausted to be afraid. 

What he couldn’t get out of his mind was the name he’d heard his captors say amidst all of the unintelligible muffled discussion and argument: _Munson_.

How could they have known?

Of course they could have had eyes on Barba’s building back then, might have paid off a doorman, a neighbor, anybody. Easy enough. He and Barba had been stupid, thinking that as long as they called each other “Detective” and “Counselor” at work and never admitted, even privately, even to each other, to falling in love with their colleague, they were safe. They’d been a little foolish and a lot stupid.

And in love, very much in ethically-problematic-in-love-with-your-colleague love.

But why, he wondered when the sole of his shoe finally hit the last landing, why had the Munson sympathizers waited almost four years? 

The reason dawned on him as he reached his apartment and found the door locked, no key in his pockets: Munson had been killed behind bars a month ago, renewing the faction of Munson-sympathizing-COs’ motive for revenge.

A more horrific thought crossed Carisi’s tired mind: if they’d spent _days_ making ransom demands from Carisi’s own building — he was sure he’d been in that couch for at least three days, maybe as long as a week — NYPD would have found him. 

His captors must have not made any ransom demands. 

With nothing left to ask for in exchange, motivated solely by a desire to avenge Munson’s death, their arguments had probably been about whether, or when, they should kill Carisi. 

For a second, he pressed his forehead to the door, his jaw tightening and his throat moving up and down as if he was crying, but no tears sprang to his eyes. 

He wanted to crumple to the ancient hallway carpet but knew the weakness, tearless crying, and trembling meant he was badly dehydrated, so if he was going to collapse, he had to at least make it out to the sidewalk first. 

In the vestibule, he gasped at the recollection of being attacked on his way to work however many mornings ago, but breathed deeply and pushed open the glass door, the final barrier between him and the outside, with whatever strength he had left in his upper body.

Outside, the sun was barely lighting the sky, which meant it was either dawn or dusk. When he saw that the sidewalks were empty and heard the birds chirping with the shrill cadence of car alarms, he knew he was somewhere between 4 and 5 o’clock in the morning, the only hour when New York City is that eerily quiet. He shouted “help!” at a passing sanitation truck before crumpling onto the grass in front of the building next to his. 

He woke up as he was being loaded into the ambulance, and told the paramedics everything he could muster at the moment: “4F. Apartment 4F, in my building. They said _Munson_.”

—

“What are you doing here?” an exasperated Benson asked when she found Barba in a hospital waiting room. “And who let you through?”

“I found my way,” Barba said, glossing over the fact that Rollins had let him in minutes earlier.

“You can’t be here. You know better. Or maybe you don’t.”

Barba threw his arms up resignedly.

“He won’t want to see you,” Benson said, and he understood the necessary cruelty in her comment. 

“I’ll leave. Just tell me he’s all right.”

Benson sighed. “He’ll be fine. He’s in there with his family. He’s getting fluids for dehydration, and had a mild concussion, but the CAT scan was all clear. He’ll heal. But you can’t talk to him before Alex Eames does.”

Barba nodded, folding his arms tightly to his chest. “I know,” he assured her. “As a lawyer, I know better. Let’s call this a brief lapse in judgment.”

“Seems like a common refrain from you the last few years.”

“Liv, I promise, I _promise_ , I have not received a single death threat since Rollins and Carisi caught Heredio.”

“We can’t talk about this —”

“And last month, after Munson was killed? Absolutely nothing. I was worried. I thought for sure I’d hear from the COs, or from someone they’d hired. But I didn’t get a single call, or email, or —”

“Rafael. We can’t talk about this.”

“But you’re my —”

“Regardless of whether we’re friends, or —”

“I thought we were past that.”

“You waited four hours,” she said, her eyes pleading with his. “I know we talked through everything from two years ago, but you waited four hours.” 

Barba swallowed hard. “Do I need to call an attorney before I speak to Eames?”

“That’s up to you.”

“You know I loved him. I love him.”

—

When it was just Carisi, Captain Eames, and one of her detectives alone in his hospital room, more memories flooded back: not of his time inside the couch, but of the woman who lived in Apartment 4F.

Carisi was a cop and a detective and an ADA and a little bit of a defense attorney as he spoke. 

“Counselor?” Eames asked. “Who is she?”

“Uh, look, I’ve never been in her apartment before this, all I knew was she lived in 4F, so you’ve got to promise me you’ll do what you have to do but you’ll keep in mind the guy who’s telling you this is dehydrated, has a concussion, and just spent — what’d they say it was, almost four days? — inside a couch. Her name’s Tricia. The lady in 4F.”

“Last name?” the detective asked. 

“Uh,” Carisi stammered, “not sure.” 

“We’ll get it,” Eames told him. “What was your relationship?”

“Friends,” Carisi said, nodding nervously. “We were, uh, together a couple times last year, but —”

“Your place or hers?”

“Mine. Like I said, I knew she lived in 4F but was never inside there. She’s nice. Kind, you know? Great sense of humor, even though she works for that dumbass shock jock on WLUO — what’s his name —”

“Tommy Schmeckelbrot,” the detective offered. 

“Right, right. I used to listen to his show when I was a teenager. You were the coolest kid in eighth grade in 1994 if you kept on top of that show no matter how much your parents said you weren’t allowed to listen to it. Turns out the guy’s probably responsible for poisoning the jury pool in half the cases that made the national news from ’92 to ’98, and he’s still running his mouth.”

“ADA Carisi,” Eames prompted as gently as she could given the circumstances.

“Call me Sonny.”

“Sonny,” she said, “how —”

“Yeah, anyway, what I meant to say was Tricia worked for Schmeckelbrot but didn’t have his sense of humor. She was working as an assistant producer, and he gave her lots of headaches, I could tell.”

“Can you think of any possible connection between her and Gary Munson, or the COs still loyal to him?”

“No,” Carisi said, “and I’ve been racking my brain about that since the doctors and nurses got me feeling a little better. If I could talk to Rafael Barba—”

“Hold off on that until we’ve had the chance to speak to him a second time.”

Carisi’s heart sunk. Bella had already told him the story about how Barba had waited four hours to go to the police, to admit to their prosecutorially problematic six-month relationship, and he just wanted to talk to Barba, to understand that what he did on that one terrible night in the middle of that one terrible winter was merely a blip, a mistake that emerged from old wounds that had never fully healed. He wanted to _know_ that Barba was indeed the man he’d started to fall in love with and not some callous fool who leapt from unethical relationship to unethical relationship, from questionable decision to questionable decision.

“Goddamnit,” Carisi suddenly muttered, half to himself.

“Something about Barba?” the detective asked.

“No. Again, do what you have to do but please don’t take what I’m saying for more than it’s worth. Tricia was always genuine, kind, like I said. Never got any bad vibes from her, and remember, I was a detective for years, so usually if something’s up I pick up a couple of bad vibes, at least.”

“But,” Eames said.

“I was never in her apartment. Only reason I knew she lived in 4F was that she said she lived there. Never had any reason to ring her bell, not in the vestibule or at her door.” 

“And how long did you —”

“On and off, two, maybe three months. Not consistently or anything. So I’m thinking of a big _what if_ here, except that makes no sense. We knew each other a year before that. She was around, outside the mailboxes, at least a year. I’ve seen her with a key, she’s let both of us in out front, in the vestibule. We all know nobody plays that long a game.”

“My former partner and I saw some things,” Eames said, her lips twisting into a grimace. She stood and gently pat Carisi on the shoulder. “We’ll look into it. In the meantime, get some rest and don’t beat yourself up. Whatever happened here is in no way, not even remotely, your fault.”

—-

He took a week off from work and went to stay with his parents, unsure of where else he could go other than the apartment two floors above the one where he’d been held inside a hollowed-out sofa for days. On his first day in his parents’ house, Eames called with the name of a psychologist and a promise that they’d ask all the questions that had to be asked, that he’d be safe. She told him about her experience with her former partner’s mentor’s daughter, how she’d been held captive and tortured, and he knew that the joint task force captain was entirely on his side. His parents, meanwhile, let him sleep.

On the second day, however, his three sisters all came over to hound him during dinner.

Later that evening, they managed to get out of him what he knew about where the investigation was headed. He told them about the woman in 4F who who he’d known as Tricia, the woman who’d maybe never actually lived in 4F and had maybe given him a false identity, regardless of what his gut had told him. “Sonny,” Teresa said, her voice dripping with exasperation, “how could you have been so stupid?”

“Fuck you, Teresa, talking like it’s his fault,” Bella said, and she had even more choice words in response to Teresa’s “he coulda been more aware, none of this would have happened if he was a little more aware.” Of course Teresa was wrong, but Carisi nevertheless felt that _how could you have been so stupid_ in the pit of his stomach, where a small voice insisted that Teresa was absolutely right.

When Gina expressed shock that her brother still slept with women, Bella shut her down and Carisi zoned out of the conversation entirely.

As he tried to fall asleep that night in the twin bed he’d been too tall for since tenth grade, he thought briefly of Barba.

He wouldn’t let Barba remain any more than a fleeting thought, because otherwise he’d imagine Barba’s sympathetically sloped green eyes, fixed on him in rapt attention as he explained to Barba how he feared that he really had gotten himself kidnapped by trusting his friendly neighbor. 

“Sonny,” Barba would say, lips pressed together almost in reverence of the name he only called Carisi in private, “what would you say to anyone else who believed a crime committed against them was their fault?”

And Carisi wouldn’t answer but Barba would draw him into his arms, whisper “then don’t you dare say that about yourself,” and pet his hair, and there in that near-perfect embrace, Carisi would cry a little, and sleep.

—

“What the hell is going on?” Rollins asked after she and Fin burst into Benson’s office, her drawl deeper and more pronounced than usual.

Benson looked up from her paperwork, confused.

“That one detective working Carisi’s case, Harpell, came to us in the field,” Fin said, “to ask us how well we knew Carisi.”

Benson removed her glasses. “How well —”

“As in, how much do we trust him. I said _with my life_ and told the detective we were calling his boss.”

“What did Eames say? Was Harpell going rogue?”

“That’s what I was hoping,” Rollins said, “but when I spoke to Eames she had me come down to 1PP and asked me the same questions. Kat said Harpell approached her too. Same stuff about Carisi’s trustworthiness.”

“No one’s talked to me yet,” Benson said.

“Probably because you have so many connections,” Rollins said, “and they don’t want you in the loop about how ever since they interrogated the woman who lived in the apartment where Sonny was being held, they’ve been investigating Sonny for staging his own kidnapping.”

Benson slammed her hands down on the table and let out the biggest “WHAT?” she’d ever let out in her long history of “WHAT?”s.

Composing herself, she then asked, “why?”

“You don’t want to know,” Fin said, looking at the floor. “Trust us, Liv, you don’t want to know.”

Benson cringed.

“It’s all bullshit, y’know,” Rollins said. “But I guess they have to follow every lead, even leads that are complete bullshit. Eames wouldn’t tell me directly what they think Carisi’s motive was, but from the questions she asked me, it’s pretty obvious that what this lady who’s lying her face off to protect her criminal ass is telling them is that Sonny staged his own kidnapping in order to “win back” Barba.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote a little more of this two weeks ago. I was planning to end this chapter on a plottier note, but since I’m not sure when I’m going to have the opportunity or motivation to write more, I’m posting what I’ve got so far.

When Carisi woke up in his parents’ house on Sunday morning, almost two weeks after the end of his ordeal, unease settled into the pit of his stomach. Maybe it was because he was supposed to go back to work the next day. Maybe it was trauma. Of course it was trauma.

And, maybe some of it was that he missed Barba, but was still furious with him, but worried that Barba had blamed himself for the kidnapping, but angry with himself for spending six months in an ethical and legal mire without disclosing. He missed Barba, and yet couldn’t think about him - his smirk, his guarded sweetness, his dedication, his focus, his intelligence - without a thousand “ifs” and “buts” and other conditionals. 

The unease wasn’t really about Barba, he told himself. He sensed that the nature of Eames and Harpell’s questions had changed during the last few days. Reassurance was turning into suspicion, and he didn’t understand why. Carisi tried to tell himself that Eames was just doing her job and that the truth would come out soon enough. As a prosector, though, he knew the change in tone wasn’t a good sign. 

When Eames called at 9 and asked him to come down to 1PP for an interview on a Sunday morning, Carisi was concerned. 

Why the hell, he asked himself, would Eames or Harpell or anyone on the joint task force have reason to believe that he wasn’t telling the whole story? 

Did they believe he’d _faked_ his own kidnapping, the one he’d emerged from dehydrated and concussed? 

If they did, he’d be charged with a felony. He ran through the names of defense attorneys in his head, both the ones he could afford and the ones who might be willing to do him a favor. 

Within minutes of the start of the “interview,” it became clear to Carisi that Eames did indeed suspect him of staging the kidnapping. 

_How?_ he wondered, knowing better than to ask that question out loud. 

“We have the pictures that Tricia and her boss took for insurance,” Eames said, sliding an envelope across the table. 

There were photos of him on the couch in apartment 4F, the one he’d spent three days trapped inside. He’d never sat on that couch. There were photos of him taking beer out of the fridge. The email sent to SVU informing his colleagues that the kidnappers were still deciding whether to kill him or ask for ransom had been traced back to an email account set up in Carisi’s apartment. More pictures had Carisi in his own apartment during the time he was actually inside the couch.

“You haven’t taken these to TARU yet, though,” Carisi said.

“We have,” Eames assured him.

“Is that for real, or are you trying —” He bit his lip, reminding himself himself to be careful about what he said next, and to immediately ask for an attorney if Eames’s questions went any further. “I know what happened to me. I was dehydrated and had a concussion. I was inside that couch for days.”

“I wanted to believe you,” Eames said, “because I sympathized. But when TARU told us that these photos were for real, I was surprised and disappointed.”

“Why would I fake my own kidnapping? Why would I give myself a concussion? We’ve worked together for years.”

“Tell me about Rafael Barba,” Harpell said, his first words since the interview began. 

“I already gave you all the information you need with regard to our relationship, the mistakes we made in not disclosing, and what I overheard about Munson.”

“I don’t think you did. I don’t think you told us how much you wanted to win Barba back.”

They thought he’d _faked his own kidnapping_ in order to _win Barba back_? 

“If you’re going to charge me —” 

“Not yet,” Eames said, and that made Carisi jump. If he was being charged with felony scheme to defraud, which would likely be plead down to a false reporting misdemeanor, and they had envelopes full of pictures that TARU claimed were real ( _how_?), they didn’t need a confession from him. 

They must have been looking at him for another crime.

He knew he should have told them he had nothing else to say until he brought in an attorney, but his curiosity got the better of him. “What else are you looking at me for?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice steady.

“We know Schmeckelbrot and his friends said they were going to extort you,” Harpell said. “We have the phone calls.”

“What?” was all Carisi could say.

“Sonny,” Eames said, purposefully catching his gaze, “when Tricia told us the story, I was the first one to say she was covering her own ass. I wanted to believe that, even when we heard about Schmeckelbrot two days later. But now, Sonny, between the pictures and the emails, we know.”

He felt tears stinging his eyes and nausea rising up in his throat.

He’d been on the other side of this sort of interrogation hundreds of times. 

“Now, see,” Eames said with a gentleness that was almost certainly feigned, “you’re an ADA. You know I mean it when I tell you your only chance at 15 to 20 as opposed to 20 to life is to tell us what you did with the weapon.”

“I’d like, I need, to call an attorney,” he stammered. 

Eames placed him under arrest for the murder of Tommy Schmeckelbrot, the shock-jock who Tricia had worked for, allowing him to remain in lockup a the station until an attorney could meet him for arraignment. He called Bella and gave her the names of five defense attorneys to contact, then sat on a bench inside a cell, stunned, waiting. 

“Think about that offer,” Harpell told him as he walked by the cell. “Your last chance for 15 to 20.” 

Carisi didn’t have the focus he needed to tell the detective that he shouldn’t be saying a word to a not-yet-arraigned suspect who’d asked for an attorney. 

Fortunately, someone else did. 

“Detective, my client asked for an attorney hours ago,” a voice came from behind Harpell. 

Rita Calhoun. 

Of the five names he’d given to Bella, none of them had been hers. He couldn’t afford her, even if he was desperate, even for a murder charge. 

“We’re taking him to arraignment,” Harpell told Calhoun. 

“Not before I talk to him.”

Ten minutes later, Carisi was sitting with one of the city’s top defense attorneys in an interview room while the detective who’d arrested him waited impatiently just outside the door.

“Ms. Calhoun,” he said, “I swear to God I have no idea —”

“Rita,” she corrected.

Neither of them addressed who had brought her there.

“Obviously I didn’t fake the kidnapping, and if I were them I’d be looking into what’s going on at TARU, who might be desperate and strapped for cash or — you ever hear about what happened with Fin’s rope guy? — but I still don’t get the connection between me and Schmeckelbrot except that he was Tricia’s boss. I do get that I mighta been betrayed by somebody I thought was a friend, but I’m telling you, Rita, I have no idea what’s going on.”

“That’s why I’m pushing for the charges to be dropped,” Calhoun said. “There are a million other angles here. Did they look into your old cases? The possibility that the COs didn’t just want to kidnap you, that they wanted to set you up? Probably not.”

Calhoun did indeed ask for a dismissal at arraignment, but the judge said his hands were tied, that they’d have to wait for pre-trial hearings and file motions then. Carisi was charged with first degree murder and felony scheme to defraud, and taken to Rikers on a million dollars bail. 

First degree murder, because Eames and the prosecutor believed that Carisi had planned to kill Schmeckelbrot as soon as the shock jock threatened to expose the ADA’s elaborate plan to win back his ex, as soon as Schmeckelbrot threatened blackmail. They were probably looking for a deal, a plea to third-degree along with the fraud charge. 

That’s what Carisi would have done. 

That’s what Carisi would have done if he had clear evidence, which the city did not. 

He spent Sunday night at Rikers. On Monday morning, a corrections officer came to tell him that he’d been bailed out. 

Carisi had spent the night standing against a wall, on guard because he feared that the CO’s might kill him in order to finally get their revenge on Barba. 

His muscles ached and spasmed. Through bleary eyes he saw Barba, waiting for him out front.

“Why’d you come?” he asked, his own voice hoarser than he’d expected.

“Didn’t want your family to have to borrow money.”

They were silent until well after they’d gotten into the back seat of the car service Barba had hired, and were already over the bridge.

“Of course I know you didn’t stage a kidnapping to win me back,” Barba said, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah. I don’t even like to anymore.”

Barba smirked. “Point taken. You don’t want to go to your place, do you?”

Carisi shook his head. 

Barba reached out a hand, covering Carisi’s shoulder. “It’s okay.”

When they were outside Barba’s apartment, Barba looked up at him with nothing but sincerity in his eyes. “I’m sorry for what they’re putting you through,” he said. 

“Yeah,” was all Carisi could muster.

Inside the apartment, Carisi spoke more freely about the case against him. “Before they turned their focus on me, they were looking at Tricia — my neighbor, it was her apartment they had me in — for setting me up. Schmeckelbrot was her boss. She told me she hated him. Months before any of this went down, she told me, and it didn’t feel like a lie.”

“Looks like she did set you up. She’ll be Rita’s best bet for reasonable doubt.”

“I put my faith in the wrong people. Bad habit of mine.”

“Once again, point taken.”

“Thank you for bailing me out and hiring Rita.”

“This isn’t right,” Barba said. “Everyone who knows you, everyone who who cares about you knows this isn’t right.”

“Yeah.” Carisi flopped down into a chair, settling in as if Barba’s place was still familiar, still allowed to be familiar. Barba paced the rectangular rug and hardwood floor. Carisi looked up at Barba with eyes that said — half-sarcastically, half-sincerely — _you still care about me?_

And Barba, reading him, stopped in his tracks and nodded.

“Sonny,” he said, standing in front of the chair, “I was terrified.”

“And you were terrified when you waited four hours to tell them about us?”

“Yes.”

Carisi wanted to stand so he could stare Barba down, but his legs were aching, muscles exhausted, form his night wide awake against a wall. 

“I was thinking,” Barba said, “of how you weren’t out to anyone other than Bella, the reasons why you weren’t —”

“I was trapped in a fucking couch while some guys who knew Gary Munson’s name debated whether or not they should kill me. And you know, you _know_ the whole story about how I already told me family everything a long time ago and they didn’t “believe” me, and what the fuck does any of that matter if there was a ticking clock on finding me?”

Barba stared down in silence. He knew, it seemed, exactly what was coming next.

“You didn’t wait four hours ‘cause of my relationship with my family. You waited four hours because you were afraid all your cases would be looked at, win appeals, on account of me testifying for you while we were together. You waited four hours ‘cause that would have been the last straw for the Bar, they would have disbarred your ass before the end of the day. They might still do it, now that it’s all out in the open.” Carisi scrubbed an open hand over his face. “Not that it would have changed anything, y’know, with Tricia, with Eames, with —” He cut himself off, his voice breaking into pieces. “I could tell you, though, if you hadn’t gotten involved the way you did in that family’s case, if you had been smart enough to recognize that the whole thing was a bunch of assholes trying to make the law reconsider how we put people’s health before all these big ideas, we might have still been together and —”

“And then the COs wouldn’t have framed you? Makes no sense, Sonny. If we were still together, it might have been worse.”

“I think this woman Tricia — we were friends —”

“With benefits.”

“What’re you, jealous I slept with somebody a year and a half after you and I were over? I still think Tricia might have been pulled into the scheme unwittingly.”

“Don’t investigate your own kidnapping.”

“What have I got to lose?”

“A solid legal defense,” Barba said sharply, his tone belied by his next gestures, sitting on the arm of the chair and leaning in closer to Carisi. 

Carisi wanted to continue the argument, but he was overwhelmed by exhaustion. A sob welled up in his chest. He leaned towards Barba, bowing his head but refusing to allow it to touch the other man’s arm.

Barba was the one who reached out, placing a hand in Carisi’s hair.

“You’re safe,” he told Carisi.

“No, I’m not.” Hot, angry tears fell onto his cheeks. “Safe from what? From my kidnappers, who are framing me to get to you? Or to get to me, seems more and more like the only person they’re really after is me.”

Now Barba knelt beside Carisi, taking the younger man’s head in both his hands. “With me,” he promised, “you’re safe.”


End file.
